Rating

Overview

Price at time of Review: AMD FX-8350 Price for MSRP of: $195.00 while the Asus Crosshair V Formula-Z can be found on newegg for $239.99

WHAT WE LIKED:

Great overclocking ability for both MB and Chip, Increased multi-threaded application performance for the Chip, Solid and robust features for the Motherboard, Great performance per value for both

WHAT WE DISLIKED:

Power Consumption & Heat threshold for the chip, no negatives for the MB

BOTTOM LINE:

You can't go wrong with either of these products. AMD has stepped things up and created a great price-to-performance product.
As usual, Asus did an amazing job with this new Motherboard. It's robust features and great performance make it a solid choice.
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Introduction

We have a combo review for you today. We are bringing you a full review of AMD’s new FX-8350 series CPU, a.k.a. the “Vishera.” In order to do that, we wanted just the right motherboard, and Asus happens to have the new Crosshair V Formula-Z ROG ready to step in. This gives us a chance to test the mettle of two top of the line products at once. Will it be a match made in heaven? We shall soon see.

AMD first released its FX series chips last year with the FX “Bulldozer” series. Some of us were not too happy with the chip, because the performance did not live up to expectations. Despite (and because of) that hiccup, we are very excited to see what their “new tech” can bring to the table. Today we are going to look at the new FX-8350 series chip, code-named “Vishera,” to see what it can do. AMD has reported that the new line of FX series chips will bring a 15% increase in performance from the previous series. We look forward to putting this claim to the test.

The new line of FX-8350 series chip is made to compete with its rival, the Intel Core i5 3570k. Our intention is to show you how it stacks up against just that, and who is still wearing the performance crown at the end.

“Over the course of AMD’s four decades in business, silicon and software have become the steel and plastic of the worldwide digital economy. Technology companies have become global pacesetters, making technical advances at a prodigious rate — always driving the industry to deliver more and more, faster and faster.

However, “technology for technology’s sake” is not the way we do business at AMD. Our history is marked by a commitment to innovation that’s truly useful for customers — putting the real needs of people ahead of technical one-upmanship. AMD founder Jerry Sanders has always maintained that “customers should come first, at every stage of a company’s activities.”

Let’s move on here and take a look at the new Piledriver Architecture.

overclocking in BIOS is to complicated for me and i tried using AMD ovevrdire but it doesnt work with my amd phenom 8600 x3 2.30ghz. so i guess ill just have to splash some cash one day on and intel i7 as i prefer intel to amd